I couldn't agree more. I made that discovery years ago. Unfortunately both houses that we have bought over the years came equipped with blinds in every window, so I've had to do this replacement thing a few times! Thank goodness for IKEA!

One of our biggest problems is that since it is so hot here in South Africa, the plastic hooks that hold the blinds up, get brittle and break. To replace them you have to remove the top rail, all the other hooks and then replace the broken ones. It is very difficult to do and needs to be done by a professional.

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"If Life Were Easy Where Would All The Adventure Be?"

Here in Canada (or I guess I shoud say here in Ontario) most rental places come without any window dressings at all. In fact the only ones I've ever heard about that do come with window dressings are apartments that are rented completely furnished.

Just as a matter of interest..... I work with one of the 2 guys that started Apollo Blinds here in Sydney,most people living in Sydney would have heard of the company, he and his father started the company and then sold it when it was at its peak. I asked Steven just the other week how many verticals does he think he has sold during his career as a blind salesman and is he still selling many verticals as I thought they are pretty much passe here. He told me he had sold thousands of the verticals then went on to say that sadly the quality of most verticals sold these days is very poor compared to those 10 years ago. He blamed the consumer for the drop in quality as people had wanted to pay less and less and so to meet that demand the manufacturers had been forced to use materials of less quality. He stated that he is currently selling far fewer verticals than ever before.

Personally I hate the things and can`t wait till I get timber venetians to cover the 6 metre or so window area at the front of our house.

Sheeesh - what problems you poor guys have. I've just been cleaning the all-round windows of our conservatory, and thought I might as well clean the blinds as well. the blinds have been up about 5 years, never had any maintenance, never been taken down, and all they took to clean was a light up & down brush with a feather duster. They look and work as good as the day they were put up - wonderful things!

We've moved into a house built in the seventies and owned by several people. The last person did nothing to renovate or really deep clean it much. WE've done an enormous amount of nitty gritty cleaning of things that I've had in rentals and in fact, had to replace the entire heating and ac system to the cost of 8000 just because no one had done it up til now for cost's sake.

So, the blinds we got were this coffin like arrangement of an enormous hideous box shaped thing with those flapping vertical blinds. They were neither clean nor even practical, and I finally let my husband tear them down and we got them all hauled away. We painted over those enormous holes in the wall where that thing was installed.If we were renting, we could not have done that.

There was one in the kitchen, and I refused to let him tear it down until a week ago when painting. I doubt if we'll put it back up.They were made of plastic material not fabric.

All of my apartments have come with blinds... Right now, we have vertical blinds for the door to the balcony. My cat LOVES to bang into them, run behind them, run through them, etc. Of course, that means there's always ONE blind that is turned wrong so we can't open them properly unless you fix it first. Very annoying!

Cat also broke some of the edges of the horizontal blinds in what's now our master bedroom... at the time my husband had it as his own room (we weren't married yet) and the cat wanted to look outside, but the blinds were down. So, the cat decided to push on the edge of the blinds (next to the rope part you use to raise/lower the blinds) to look outside. Well, the blinds are older and brittle, so the cat broke the edges off of 4 of the slats. Of course, my husband was in the room at the time, heard the cat making the noise and didn't look! When I found out what had happened (days later), he just said "I wondered what he was up to!"

The blinds are now up high enough so the cat can see. But our latest lease renewal said that people with coloured drapes need to have them lowered to give the appearance of white/beige outside at all times. When I read that, I told the lady they had a choice between ruined blinds or a perfect appearance!

_________________________"Without the darkness, how would we see the light?" ~ Tuvok

Not a fan of curtains. Have had blinds in my house for 30 years. Mostly the horizontal kind. If you don't buy the cheap ones (i.e. make sure they're metal or wood slats), they are easily cleaned by laying them on the driveway and hosing them off. If you don't have a driveway, take them to the carwash once per year, hang them up on the pegs on the wall and wash them that way. Works great. The windows I didn't hang blinds on are either stained glass or frosted (for privacy, but still let lots of light in). The only "windows" that had verticals blinds were the patio doors. We ripped those out and put in garden doors that have blinds between the two layers of glass. Perfect solution and you NEVER have to clean them lol

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Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense- Gertrude Stein

SELLEY"S SUGAR SOAP..............Just cleaned mine..get a cloth [not a sponge] and sugar soap from the supermarket.Fill a bowl or bucket with water and a cup of sugar soap{warm}. Take a blind at a time down from the top off the hook,I left the base connected...I used a small coffee table with a towel over it and applied a damp cloth over it working away from you. Then rinse and do it a few times more,untill you reach the base.Dry it with a seperate cloth as you go,doesn't matter if it gets wet.Turn over and do the other side.Hang back up and start a new one.I did 30. All at once... but you can get back to it when you feel like it. Hope it helps...

In the USA we call sugar soap TSP or TriSodium Phosphate. It can be found in the paint supply section of the major hardware chains. It works wonders taking tobacco stains off anything (even clothes in the washing machine). If ample collecting efforts are made to handle run-off (place the blind bottom in a small bucket), the TSP can be put into a pump sprayer and spray the mixture right onto the blinds in place and watch the dirt flow down the material. You might not even need to rinse the TSP off! Then the windows behind them can get by with normal cleaning effort.

_________________________If you aren't seeing Heaven while you dream, you're doing something wrong.Dreams allow escape from the passage of Time.The ultimate activity is the Dream.